


les amis Collective 3.0

by Ark



Series: Hacker AU [3]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Again, Anal Sex, Angst, Breakfast, Lives, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Occupy Wall Street, Oral Sex, Revolutionaries, Rimming, Sex, Social Justice, Unsafe Sex, and
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 18:49:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/701479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/pseuds/Ark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras hadn't meant to sound disdainful. It had been surprise, only that, and he isn't used to surprises, hadn't liked them very much until he met Grantaire, who is full of them. This one is not unpleasant. It is only unanticipated, considering the fierce pessimism with which Grantaire had responded to their discussions about changing the world and the power of --</p><p>“The people, united, will never be defeated,” says Grantaire, making the rallying cry into sing-song, as it had often been sung at protests. “What a load of horse shit.” He takes another bite of bagel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	les amis Collective 3.0

**Author's Note:**

> Whoa! OK, so, this baby has grown. I decided I had to include lucabee's smokin' [fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/684638) for this AU as fade-in headcanon; if you're just joining us from 2.0, you must consider reading that. You will be a happy camper. 
> 
> There's also been a Joly/Bossuet [interlude](http://et-in-arkadia.tumblr.com/post/43275523055/e-r-hacker-au-a-very-joly-instance) at request. A few spoilers relate to here, but it can be stand-alone. Carry on, wayward readers.
> 
> Always and forever to my tumblr dudes. This is only here because of you.

After their adventure on the subway, they're content to stumble through the door and down the hall and fall into bed half-clothed, still laughing. Enjolras' heart hasn't ceased its marathon pace since the bar but in bed, in the dark, he feels it start to slow. A little.

Grantaire has lost his shirt and is putting up his hips to shimmy free from his jeans. He wears boxer-briefs and socks to sleep. Enjolras echoes him, sans socks. Then he slides across the bed and puts a hand to Grantaire's hip, a question. 

Some people don't like to be touched while falling asleep, while sleeping. It can feel restrictive, distracting. Enjolras remembers the effort of trying to match his breathing to that of the first boy he'd ever shared a bed with, thinking that if they could just breathe in tandem, the narrow borders of the mattress would ease. But it never really worked, because no one can fall asleep while they're trying to breathe like someone else. 

Other people are cuddlers. Clingers. They like nothing so much as to be wrapped up or to wrap themselves around another person while horizontal. They'll bury their face in your neck, or let you do that. Bodies meet and fit together in a way that can feel more intimate than sex. Sometimes more reassuring. 

Enjolras doesn't mind either way. He doesn't have a set preference, not really. Sleeping side by side has always been more rare for him than sex, and sex rare enough these days with the intensity of the Collective's activities. But he'll admit it: he likes the times when he can let himself relax against someone else, let down the guard that is always up: times few and far between, and trust elusive these days.

He lets Grantaire decide. It's rare, for him.

Grantaire looks back, over his shoulder, and then he draws Enjolras' hand over and across his belly, to settle spread-fingered there; Grantaire's skin is warm. Enjolras' arm follows, and he moves to match the movement, aligning his body along the line of Grantaire's, both of them curved sideways. He buries his face in Grantaire's neck, for the space of a breath. 

“Yes,” Grantaire agrees, to the unasked question, “Like this,” and they fit together, and their chests rise and fall at very different rhythms, and they fall asleep so quickly.

 

* * *

 

In the morning, they've become unfixed puzzle pieces, an arm thrown here, an elbow there, legs askew but feet still touching, and Enjolras thinks his arm must be heavy on Grantaire. But Grantaire does not stir until Enjolras starts to bite a series of alarms into his shoulder. Even then it takes a while.

“Mrrrm,” says Grantaire, and the little sound sounds grouchy.

Not a morning person, then. It's not a huge surprise, and for the time being Enjolras can work with the rebellion. 

He ups the ante along with the suction from his mouth. “Breakfast.” Grantaire stays down. “Coffee,” says Enjolras. Then, with a nip, “Bagels. With eggs and cheese on them.”

“Mrph,” protests Grantaire, but now he's registered interest. Either the teeth sunk into his neck or the promise of protein and caffeine nudge him slowly towards wakefulness. Once awake, he is instantly so; and he turns with Enjolras' arm still tucked in close to face him. 

“Morning,” finishes Grantaire, rounding off the hum. No one's mouth tastes good in the morning, no matter what they've been eating or smoking or how much brushing, it's the universal human condition, but when you have a particularly interesting mouth against your own you forget to mind. 

Grantaire kisses without hesitation, and both of them pretend like toothpaste isn't a thing. There are more important matters anyway. They're obviously hard in the way that mornings encourage, and Grantaire is trailing sleepy fingers down the flat plane of Enjolras' abs towards his waistband to do something about it. 

Grantaire's smart hand steals around his cock, and his blue eyes are on him, aware and watching now, gauging reaction. So easy, both of them know, so easy to slip into the thing that is between them, the call for base sex and rutting, the open drive to screw which they have in common whenever it seems that they have little else.

Enjolras prefers a challenge. He likes the doubled reward of showing some restraint. “After breakfast,” he says, securing Grantaire's wrist to hold it still before all is lost. Past the raucous gathering of Grantaire's curls the clock says 10:30a.m. Already too late for a normal workday. They've both exposed irregular schedules. “If you can stay?”

Grantaire can. “Today's cool. My shift doesn't start until eight.”

It occurs to Enjolras that they've performed a wide variety of sexual acts and social activities and exchanged poetry and still he has no idea what Grantaire actually does to pass the time, for profit or creatively. He's so used to playing close to the vest and performing an imagined Enjolras for the masses when he's out that he forgets people live actual lives offline. “Where at?”

“Oh,” says Grantaire, easing his hand away as directed and then using it to push back his hair, which proves even more distracting, “I bar-tend sometimes -- coupla places. Got a catering gig that pays pretty good, too, when it pays. Enough to cover the rent. Fancy parties, you know, fancy people who like their fancy drinks just so. But the tips are sweet.”

“You mentioned that last night,” says Enjolras, to show that he was listening. “About Bossuet. You work with him?”

“When they let us have the same shift. We're known troublemakers, but we're charming,” says Grantaire, looking distracted. He comes back. “You think they were okay?”

Enjolras thinks about this. “Joly and Bossuet? I should have said, but Joly's one of my best--”

“No, I know, he seemed great. It isn't that.” Grantaire worries his lower lip. Enjolras does not resist leaning in to lick it. Sometime later Grantaire says, “It's just -- it's a little complicated. I'm happy that they met, but--”

Enjolras had seen the flinch of hesitation that went through Grantaire when Joly and Bossuet caught hands and held like that. “Not on your account, you said as much. Internal band drama?”

Grantaire allows a little laugh before he sobers. “Always. But not that. My roommate will have something to say about it, in couplets, and I don't know how he'll feel. It's hard to predict Jehan.”

Enjolras returns to the occupation of setting bitemarks into Grantaire's shoulder, since breakfast will be ready whenever they so choose to go out. “I thought I would meet him at the show.”

“He wanted to be there,” says Grantaire, “and he didn't. Anyway he had some reading or another to attend. Perfectly valid.” His body seals up against Enjolras', skin to skin and hard cocks barely held by thin fabric and it's terribly hard to ignore considering his arm is still tight around Grantaire and has been since they went laughing into bed.

“Anyway,” Grantaire is saying, “he approves of you, if that matters. It was his idea that I was on that godforsaken website at all; he sat me down when I was drunk one night and said we were taking personality quizzes and by the end of it I had a dating profile. He wouldn't let me take it down,” says Grantaire, very close, “and then I decided to see who it said I couldn't have, and then I saw your face.”

The picture in the avatar (chosen by Courfeyrac) is of Enjolras at a rare moment without a laptop obscuring his profile; a thick book does it instead, and his hair is minted by the Fire Island sun. The beach spreads out around him, and there is a green blanket underneath his sprawl, over the white sand. 

Enjolras doesn't want to speak to the fact of Courfeyrac's selection so he says, “I like Jehan already. I'll have to thank him.”

“Expect a haiku in return,” warns Grantaire. “You should see him at a slam. It's something that has to be witnessed. Like Ep's voice.”

There's no polite way to ask after someone's passions when you're more than half-naked in bed with them and you're ready to go and everything is screaming sex sex sex sex but you're trying to show that you have manners and interest in other people. 

“So,” says Enjolras, delicately, and he's allowed to slide his hand down the slope of Grantaire's back and over his ass and back up again, that's still civil, “Are you working on anything at the moment?”

“Five different projects, and finishing none, as per usual,” says Grantaire, with a roll of his eyes at himself. “I'm multimedia. I'll get a commissions sometimes to do some design work, make a logo or, like, a t-shirt for someone's band, or do the album cover, that kind of stuff. That kind of stuff pays for food after rent and keeps me in oils and darkroom hours. It's cool, no complaints except the price of paint. It's crazy enough that anyone pays for the shit I draw. I'm probably a better photographer, but these days everyone's a photographer. I don't get hired to do hipster weddings anymore because of Instagram.”

“Do you have a portfolio online?” Enjolras asks. “I want to see what you can do.”

“I'll show you after breakfast,” says Grantaire, a grin edging up, not talking about his art, or maybe he is. “There's some stuff on my Facebook page, but, _Luddite,_ remember? Feuilly's the only one of us who has, like, a regular 9 to 5 at an office with business casual and spreadsheets, and he scans stuff for me when I need it.”

Enjolras has been half-listening and half-imagining taking Grantaire for a stroll through Pearl Paint's six floors of art supplies and how his face would probably recompose on every floor and be lit up and turned on and they'd fuck in one of the more deserted crafts zones, by the embroidery hoops. “You don't have a tablet?”

“No _computer,_ dude,” Grantaire points out. He laughs at the expression Enjolras can't suppress at the reminder. “If I promise to look into updating to at least the internet circa 1998, can I have a coffee the size of my head?”

“Let's get take out,” Enjolras agrees. 

“Man with the plan,” says Grantaire, rolling out from under him and out of bed, then making it a race to see who can dress the fastest. Enjolras wins, because he dislikes losing, and because Grantaire, once the loss is apparent, makes a slow show of pulling _on_ his clothes, an act that shouldn't be erotic but is. 

They're both a bit of a mess, disheveled hair and stubble and underneath the fabric their skin still has the scent of them together; but it's a relaxed lull in the morning, with most people already at work, and they stroll to the store around the corner, unhurried. 

They take the tack that seems to work with them, discussing mundane things, the TV shows they watch when they have time, books they keep meaning to read, their favorite spots in the city, until a Yankees (Enjolras) versus Mets (Grantaire) debate threatens to flare up; but they settle it by agreeing the Brooklyn Cyclones should be in for a good season. The bagel shop is almost empty, and their orders are ready even before Grantaire has gotten to refill his enormous coffee, though he tops it off before they leave.

The subject has turned to concerts they've attended while Enjolras tries to unlock the gate, juggling bag and cup and distracted by Grantaire's story of a music festival in Budapest where the crowd camps out on the island for a week, and an orgy, when someone says, loudly, “ _Grantaire?_ ”

Both of them look around. Then, “ _Marius?_ ”

Then a body is vaulting over the side of the railing that leads to the brownstone above, and it is barreling into Grantaire, who barely keeps his coffee. He would be caught off his feet and swung around, only the hugging figure has nearly the same wiry build, so they only rock back and forth and back and forth again.

“Marius, what are you--”

“It's been so long--”

“God, I know -- when was the last? Oakland? Christ, fuck, it's so good to see you, we were--”

“I've been meaning to Facebook you, I just moved back last month--”

“Last month! Dude!”

“It's been totally crazy. I'm back in school and back at the job and I haven't had a moment to--”

“You have no idea, we've been wondering what -- we thought you were still in India. Total radio silence. Marius, you had us --”

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I know all the ways in which I suck. Some things don't change, hey? We gotta get a beer and catch up, you won't believe the stuff that's been going on. I'm --” Marius, his straw-colored hair flying as one hand gestures every which way in a fit of enthusiasm, takes a moment to inhale and look over at Enjolras as he retracts his other hand from Grantaire's elbow. “I'm, uh, sorry. Hey, man.” 

Enjolras returns the polite nod: Marius' hands on Grantaire haven't been any more familiar than a refound friendship. _He's_ never encountered Marius as anything more than the silent resident of 2F, which is in blessed contrast to 2E, and Enjolras had given over an extra front door key for the purposes of the pretty blonde who was usually with him. 

“I see you know my landlord,” Marius is saying to Grantaire after the acknowledgment. 

Grantaire swings what's mostly a questioning look at Enjolras, then answers, neutral, “Yeah. I guess I do. You live here? In this building?”

“What're the chances, right? New York fucking City, my friend.” Marius is beaming, and shaking his head; then the broad smile falters a little, like it's being propped up. “Is she—”

“She's fine. You should fucking give her a phone call.” Grantaire's voice has changed, too. It goes flat. “If you knew how much we worried--”

“Listen,” says Marius, with his iPhone suddenly out and in hand, “I'm messaging you right now to make a date, okay? My schedule's nutso this week but it's gonna happen. I didn't mean to interrupt, I just couldn't believe it was you down there, of all places--”

The conversation's clearly at an end. Grantaire engages in another back-smacking bro-hug and a promise to meet up, and then Marius is retreating, this time up the stairs.

Enjolras gets the door open, and they go inside. Grantaire is looking a little dazed, but leads the way without prompt into the kitchen, and goes to grab plates whose location he learned on the morning he cooked breakfast in boxers for Enjolras. 

“Wow,” he says, passing over napkins. “That was the last person I expected to see back in the city and _in your house_. And also, you're a _landlord_? In Brooklyn? Just how much does web design pay these days? I think I learned the wrong kind of design.”

“I made a few good investments. This seemed like another one,” Enjolras hedges. “It's a long story, and boring.” It isn't, but that isn't the point at hand. “Old friend of yours?”

“You could say that.” Grantaire slides onto the stool beside him at the counter and starts unwrapping the foil keeping him from his bagel. It takes some time to undo. “I know him from a while ago. From Occupy.”

Enjolras' own deliciously steaming breakfast sandwich is caught a half-inch from his mouth. He blinks. Grantaire has taken a large bite, like punctuation on the sentence, like it's finished. Enjolras forgets about the eggs. “Really? You were part--”

“Yeah. I was. Third day in Liber -- in Zuccotti Park, up until the night we were...evicted.” Grantaire chooses the last word carefully. And maybe Enjolras' words sounded like disdain or maybe Grantaire's used to a certain reaction, because after some consideration and considerable chewing and swallowing, he slants a wry look. He flashes a peace sign with two fingers, and his tone is dry where it is not brittle: “Peace, love, and the 99% percent, dude.”

Enjolras hadn't meant to sound disdainful. It had been surprise, only that, and he isn't used to surprises, hadn't liked them very much until he met Grantaire, who is full of them. This one is not unpleasant. It is only unanticipated, considering the fierce pessimism with which Grantaire had responded to their discussions about changing the world and the power of --

“The people, united, will never be defeated,” says Grantaire, making the rallying cry into sing-song, as it had often been sung at protests. “What a load of horse shit.” He takes another bite of bagel.

Enjolras finally echoes the eating, because he's starving, and because for once he's at a loss for what to say. Grantaire's tone is threaded through with acid, and he makes the statement with the clear purpose of ending the conversation, or goading Enjolras into ending it. But Enjolras isn't about to pass through a revelation that makes him look at Grantaire all over again, as though he hasn't fully seen him before. _Scratch any cynic and you'll find a disappointed idealist._

The Collective had followed the burgeoning popular movement against greed with interest, of course, and occasionally covert support, helping to spread their message virally and release footage from police and protestors that was being suppressed. A few of the amis in the city had taken an even more active front, Bahorel volunteering as a legal observer, wearing the assigned neon green hat and writing down the names of teenagers as they were shoved into police vans; Joly as a medic for the big marches that got both labor unions and grandparents involved. 

Enjolras had gone down many times to see the occupied square near Wall Street, teeming with life and tents and activity; he'd had spirited conversations with the denizens of the park and the press and the milling gawkers, buoyed, like so many, by the sight of such disparate types come together against inequality. Could Grantaire have been close by, all those days?

“Tell me about it,” Enjolras says, trying to keep his tone even. Nonjudgmental does not come naturally to him, but the enthusiasm is genuine. This is better than baseball. “I was behind the concept. The world needs a lot more movements like that, organic instead of corporate, and it's been a while since we saw something like it in America. Why didn't you tell me you'd been with Occupy?”

“You didn't ask.” Grantaire is eating fast, is near halfway done. He lifts his shoulders in a shrug which only becomes half defensive. “Like I said, it was long time ago; and anyway,” and his eyes flicker sideways at Enjolras, not really a question, “You didn't seem like someone who was into civil disobedience. At least at first.” At least his voice has more mischief, for a moment, than the grief Enjolras thinks he hears underneath.

He manages to swallow his mouthful smoothly, but only just. “And now?”

“There's potential,” Grantaire allows, with vestibule and bathroom and subway behind them. “But public display is a lot different than disorderly conduct.”

“You didn't ask, either,” Enjolras points out. “There's a lot you still don't know about me.” An unfathomable amount. Bunkers full of servers. Terabytes of data. Impossible to process. “But I asked first. Tell me about it.”

Grantaire takes a long sip of coffee, like it's something heavier, with a two-digit percent alcohol content. He doesn't set down the cup. His hand is closed around it. Then he's off. “What would you like to hear about first? I got involved, first, because of Feuilly; he was responding to the call for drummers to go down to the square. Drums for freedom, man. Never underestimate the beat. Wars have been won throughout history based on which side had the better marching band. 

We were there first day; we moved in on the third. We were, like, the vanguard, or something. It just happened, because we were first. That's where I met Jehan, and Eponine, and too many people to count, and too many people I've forgotten, and some I've made myself forget. What kind of story are you searching for, Enjolras? I have every sort. Are you in the mood for tales of the nights we danced together, and the cigarettes we rolled, and the free love we made? No? Instead maybe I should tell you how to wash pepper spray from your friends' eyes; you do so with milk, because water only increases the burning. When it's on you you can't breathe; you think dying might be better. Soon you learn about covering your eyes and face, and carrying milk. 

Would it interest you to hear how many times I've been arrested? It does? I wish it were more, but the authorities started jacking up the charges, with the courts complicit, and lots of us who wanted to be cuffed couldn't let ourselves be. We were needed in the park, not prison. So instead I could tell you about the times I stood on the curb with the rest of the watchers like a coward, watching others do what I wanted to. 

I'll describe the typical scene. Imagine hippie kids in Save the Earth shirts, singing “Imagine,” and an old woman in a wheelchair, and hopeful young students, and teachers past retirement, daring to sit at the intersection of a street close to the one most essential for the nation's economic health and well-being. That one was blocked off and guarded. These people, believing that our country, our very world had been made sick by worshiping money instead of equality, risked sitting down, and linking arms; it took four or five officers to break them apart and drag off each one. Every time. That time, a lady was wheeled. But you haven't lived until you've watched NYPD lieutenants, laughing in their gold brocade, smash sixteen-year-olds into the pavement. It's something to wake up to.”

Enjolras is aware that he is staring. In a cartoon, he might pick up a dropped jaw. Grantaire, speaking on the subject, is transformed -- his blue eyes have a blaze brighter than even sex made them, and he stares back without flinching once in the recitation; he isn't finished. “Well, you appear intrigued, at least, I'll give you that. Most people usually stop me by this time in show-and-tell. You _like_ this shit, don't you? Man, just when I think I've got my finger on the pulse of you, you're someone else.” 

Enjolras hitches up a brow at that, and Grantaire laughs, a hollow sound. “Okay, yeah, back to my past life as a bleeding-heart. It lasted as many months as Occupy did; and the bigger we got, and the more the press paid attention, and the more money from donations that came in, and the more the politicians started evaluating, the more internal arguments spiraled, and the crazier everything became. But since we were the vanguard, some of us got to travel around to see the other movements that had sprung up in solidarity; and believe me when I say, Enjolras, that at the beginning, it was something to see. In huge cities, and little ones, everywhere, people were angry, and scared, but they chose to come together, to live together, and to protest for a better world. Nothing more nor less than that. 

There was a time when you would not have recognized me. I could stand up and speak the most ridiculous nonsense in the General Assembly about universal brotherhood and sisterhood and the rights of the 99% for, like, six hours, watch in hand, and bring hot tea and sandwiches to the cops who patrolled us, and draw signs until my hands bled. But I don't suppose you want to hear--” 

Grantaire is watching, and his smile, hollowed as his laugh, goes wider. “Oh. _Oh._ You _do_. What -- you really are, like, a social justice junkie, aren't you? It isn't all theory. You're totally getting off on the idea of me barricaded at the Brooklyn Bridge by an orange net.”

It's not the time to deny it. He doesn't have to explain. His reaction must be obvious enough. Enjolras says, “You said it: I'm intrigued.”

“You totally fucking love it,” laughs Grantaire. He swigs more coffee, though it has long since grown cold. “Should I start wearing my old spray-paint protest t-shirts, and let my hair dreadlock, and tell you about how if we can just bring the wealthiest, most powerful people in the universe to accountability by camping out and holding meetings about it, together we can change the--”

Enjolras shakes his head. “We'll revisit the attire,” he says, managing to keep his face straight-faced. “I want you to keep talking the way you were.”

“All that twaddle,” says Grantaire. “You _love_ it. Well, let me tell you. Last year, while you were here on your computer, I was helping to build a community. We had something, for a minute, when the media liked us, when things were good. Politicians shook our hands, and people online leaked videos of the police fucking us up for no reason. Popular opinion was with us; more and more allies joined up; _The Occupied Wall Street Journal_ never stopped going to press. 

The Mayor tried to say that we were bad for business, that we were disrupting the way of life and commerce, but the buses kept stopping by, full of eager tourists who wanted to take our picture. I worked in art and signs, and sometimes at the cigarette-rolling table, and sometimes in the kitchen; Jehan was in the People's Library, and Feuilly at the drum in the circle, and Eponine one of our voices.” At the finale of it, Grantaire looks away. The speech has slowed, washed up against an unforgiving dam. “Anyway, it was a long time ago.”

Enjolras is having difficulty moving past the suggested sights: Grantaire, bold in a crowd, probably in a colorfully worn hoodie, expounding on the rights of man; Grantaire making protest art though his fingers ached; Grantaire shoved back behind an orange riot-grade police net. 

“Not so far away,” says Enjolras. He hops down from the high counter chair, feet solidly on ground, and bridges the distance to Grantaire. “I'm glad you did those things. I'm not judging. I want to keep hearing about them.”

“You would,” Grantaire says, trying to tease, though he shivers all over from Enjolras' hands: one up the back of his neck into his hair, irresistible, the other suggestive on his thigh; just enough. Grantaire responds to the approach with amusement, but it slowly fades as he shakes his head. “But then we come to the story's end. You know it, if you read the news, and I know you do.”

Enjolras -- occupies -- himself in gripping ink-dark hair and trying to communicate his encouragement through the fabric that covers Grantaire. He thinks about it, though, dredges mental databanks, emerges nodding. Another instance of the tyranny of local and federal authority. Unfortunate, he'd thought, at the time, and winced; but not unexpected. He passed by Zuccotti Park the day after the...eviction, and been sad to see the square hosed down with water and empty. Bankers hurried on their way to lunch across it.

The Mayors of the nation, faced with the problem of a growing movement of indefinite shape and proportion, held a conference call wherein they discussed strategies to end it; planned out how to nip the thing in the bud, and then they did that. 

The operation was completed under the cover of darkness, with restricted media and too many police, an army of them; once New York, the vanguard, was cleared, the other cities followed suit. 

Foremost in Enjolras' mind is the narrative les amis publicized out of lower Manhattan: a City Councilman, called in by his constituents to witness the events in the park, was arrested, denied his rights, and kept locked in a van for several hours without attorney; Enjolras remembers thinking if that was the fate of Councilmen, the plight of the Occupiers was likely far worse than the media had been permitted to report. He has a reliable source amongst the press who is quick to the front lines, a grizzled veteran of the newsroom, but even his dogged investigator had been kept a block away. 

And Grantaire--

Grantaire has pushed up against him, leaned into his neck. The last of their breakfast is forgotten. “You know the end, but you weren't there. I won't describe it to you after this. But it is there behind my eyes, when I close them. We tried negotiation, and it did not work. We tried pleading, and it did not. We tried non-violent resistance, as we had long practiced, and were overtaken. 

One by one we were carted off; or they found us, and pulled us from our tents while we clung to them; the police pulled down the tents; they took down everything that we had made and built; they hurt us while we wept. Sometimes, I still hear Jehan screaming as they try to drag him away, only he won't go, and I see the way they make his face look, when they shovel the books he tended like children into the trash heap. The librarians were some of the last removed from the park. They would not go. They tried to protect the books. I see my friends crying while their hopes are razed; I see it every day, Enjolras. Was I supposed to mention it over French food, when we met?”

The hand Enjolras has in Grantaire's hair comes down, and his other hand goes up, and Enjolras frames his face. He holds on, letting Grantaire breathe through it; his thumb traces the fine edge of Grantaire's cheekbone. Then he says, “Maybe you should have. You're right, I like to see you like this. It's healthier than the cynicism. Most responses are. Not that I think you haven't earned it: I see your reasons and they are real.” Grantaire's features tilt towards him, to the light; and if he is all too lovely like this, thinks Enjolras, what must he have looked like, unbroken? “Why go the other way, though? Why abandon idealism? Why stop? There's always something else to--”

“No,” says Grantaire, slowly, but he reaches one hand to Enjolras' cheek, to return the gesture. “They stop you. Someone will. Something does. I've seen it done now, more times than I can count; I know the way the wind blows. What did we think we were doing? Did we ever really think that we could win? I should have known. I used to like history, when I was in school.” He drops his eyes to the abandoned meal on the countertop. “Anyway, breakfast's over, and I seem to recall certain promises about that; and while we're on the subject I'd really rather be blowing you than talking about this.”

Enjolras brings their mouths together, their raised hands going along, and when he pulls back he keeps his forehead against Grantaire's. 

“I'm sorry for what you experienced,” he tells Grantaire. For the first time, he finds himself anxious to tell Grantaire about the Collective, to tell and show him all that they had done, to show him that things really could be changed, that they affected it every day. 

But he cannot begin to explain how only just yesterday they had liberated funds from corruption in Afghanistan and funneled it towards schooling and infrastructure, while also publishing pictures of minor British royals in minor backroom dealings; cannot bring up the spreadsheets that track their targets for the week, all the good that they will do, blows dealt to the very abuses of authority that so distressed Grantaire. There is no way to start. He does not say any of it; his lips are only good for kissing then. 

Then Grantaire says, “I'm...I'm not sorry. It was important, and I'm proud of a lot of it; but I'm afraid I learned the wrong lesson. I don't like to talk about it, and now I'm done, and if you want me animated for a cause, I'll give you a different one to rally around. Let's find out your other kinks. I'm finished with social justice.”

“If that's what you'd prefer,” says Enjolras, with some regret. The Grantaire he's told he wouldn't recognize sounds like a man he wants to know. But it's easy, so easy, too easy, to slide his hands between Grantaire's ass in jeans and the hardwood of the seat, and let the ghost of the other Grantaire go.

Grantaire's eyes are guileless, like he hasn't heard him. “What are they, then? Aside from risking yourself, and me, in indecent exposure. Go wild. It's hard to shock me.”

More difficult to make a shrug casual when he's gathering Grantaire against him and they're both harder than the wood of the seat. “I don't know.”

“Everybody knows,” tsks Grantaire. His dark eyebrows are put up, like flags.

“Would you believe me when I say I haven't had much time nor inclination to find out?” Enjolras states it flatly; he's not teasing, and in fact it's as honest an admission about himself as anything he could show Grantaire on a laptop screen. 

“Yes,” says Grantaire, following a pause, “I might believe that.” He puts a hand under the hem of Enjolras' t-shirt, puts it warm against his belly. He wets his lips, and Enjolras does the same; it's impossible not to do the same; Grantaire's eyes are a color that is wicked. “But was it lack of inclination or of opportunity?” 

“Plenty--”

“Plenty of people have wanted to sleep with you, sure,” says Grantaire. “Everybody does. That's simple. I'm asking: what do _you_ \--?”

“I want what you want,” says Enjolras, and before he can think too long about the foreign urge it's out. “That's what I want right now. You tell me, Grantaire. Pick a kink. Any kink.”

“You say that now, but wait until I--”

“You don't need to smile like that, like this is a joke. I'm serious.” Enjolras resumes the action of the morning: bites set into Grantaire's shoulder without hesitation, telegraphing intent. “You tell me.”

Now he can't see Grantaire's face but he thinks he might almost be blushing, for all the bravado. “It's -- it's not so much a kink, at that, then. I mean, I -- there's not, like, a good way to ever bring this up, ever, so--”

He's listening. “I'm listening.”

“Thing is,” says Grantaire. “There's nothing quite like -- I guess what I'm trying to say is: I'm clean; I have the letter from the lab and everything. I got tested last month, as one should, and since then I haven't -- I mean -- so I was thinking, that if -- if you were interested, maybe we could --”

Enjolras' pulse-rate, and his cock, are interested; his brain whirls with it, computes, and then his heart beats faster and his cock doesn't understand why they're not already fucking. He draws back, to look at Grantaire. Grantaire's lip is being bitten. Enjolras wants to laugh and tear into him in the same breath. He smiles, somehow. “You actually brought the letter, didn't you.”

“...Yes?”

Now Enjolras does start laughing. Interrupts it by leaning in to kiss Grantaire again. He's surprised by the crush of the kiss, the ferocity; it doesn't match with the laugh. This is something -- it's something. It's not the kind of milestone one discussed over dinner, or threw a dinner-party to celebrate. But it's something. Denoted a level of trust, of exclusivity, that went a lot deeper than what was, technically speaking, their thirdish date. 

He doesn't think about that, though. Not very much. He's thinking about -- he says it, for their mutual benefit: “You want me to fuck you bareback.”

Grantaire's mouth, an uncertain line, makes a circle as it opens. “Yes.”

“How?”

“Lots of ways.” His eyelashes are long. His eyes are a range of blue: ocean, aqua, sapphire, sky. “What I want is to feel all of you in me. I want your cock, deep as you can go, and nothing between us--”

“On your hands and knees?”

“Yes,” breathes Grantaire. He's breathing deep. He wants it, deep --

“If we do this,” says Enjolras, and they both know they're not just talking about sex, on the floor, or on the couch, maybe, or even right here on the counter -- “If we do this,” because he needs to hear Grantaire say it, he's finding out, and of all the surprises where Grantaire is concerned, Enjolras is surprised the most by his own possessiveness. Can you claim someone you've known for a week, mark them out as yours? Should you? “Will you let anyone else fuck you after we do this, Grantaire?”

“No,” says Grantaire, soft as his yes. “No. Not un-- not unless we've decided to stop. Fucking.” There's a slip, a flavor Freudian, where he might have said “until” but doesn't. It still sounds heavy. He attempts to leaven it. “Or not unless you want me to, and are watching.”

Enjolras tries not to be close-minded, affords every person their private lifestyle, but that's not what he needs to hear or imagine just then. No, the opposite. “The first. No one else.”

“I've barely been able to look at porn since I saw your fucking picture,” says Grantaire, more conversational, but no less earnest. “And I've needed porn to get through this week, after what you did to me in bed.”

“What was that?”

“Something-something about the face of God,” says Grantaire, his own face coming alive, “but I'm forgetting. Remind me, won't you?”

“Yes,” says Enjolras.

He wants to take him to the floor, right there, have him on the kitchen tiles. It would be the most direct way, the fastest. Find a bottle of some slick oil in the cabinet, fuck like they are from another century entirely, pry Grantaire open with oil and slick his cock and just push into him all at once, nothing else between them --

Restraint has been his guide today, though, and has not been proven wrong. What if he had let Grantaire ride him that morning, or take him in his clever mouth; what then? They might not have met Marius, or had Grantaire's story from it; maybe he never would have shared who he once was --

\-- and what he needs, now --

Enjolras, with restraint, directs them toward the living room instead of the floor. Their progress is hindered by tangled limbs but then he's crowding Grantaire onto the big leather couch. Another indulgence in comfort, since he works from home; he blesses his past foresight, though he had never indulged in a scene like this. There's a lot of space to lay Grantaire out on, and he follows after, on top of Grantaire. It's definitely restrained, considering his thought pattern. 

All at once he's tired of talking. He knows Grantaire is. He only has to grab for a seam of Grantaire's shirt before he's helping to shrug it off, so Enjolras does the same. Grantaire's chest is smooth but there is a faint trail of dark hair that dips below his belt. Enjolras, leaning in sans shirt, moves down to follow its path with his tongue.

He doesn't say anything to the arc of Grantaire's hips rising underneath him, just digs his fingers in around the bones, and starts to tug at denim. The pause to wriggle free from pants isn't as distracting as it should be, because the light of Grantaire's eyes has gone dark with arousal, and his eyes are very round. When their jeans are off, Enjolras stops Grantaire from falling back again, and turns him around.

Grantaire is quick enough to get his knees underneath him, and shape his elegantly made body into a square, with his hands gripping the leather of the couch at the span of his shoulders, and his head twisting around so that he can look at Enjolras. 

Enjolras avoids the look, which says, specifically, _fuck me_ in several languages and cultural traditions, and focuses instead on kissing along the joints of Grantaire's spine. There's a long chain of them, and at the end he keeps going, until he is baring Grantaire to the insistence of his tongue.

That's when Grantaire speaks. Raggedly. Surprised. “You don't have—”

“I like to,” says Enjolras. 

Words dry up again. His tongue is wet. It goes far in exploration, stakes out the territory and makes it his. Every tactic that his mouth advances is enhanced by the response of Grantaire to it. With nothing but silence between them, Enjolras' tongue tells Grantaire what his cock will do. Grantaire's hands have bunched up on the leather, and his head is hanging low; a muscle on his inner thigh is twitching. 

“Enjolras, fuck--” The record time on Grantaire staying silent, Enjolras calculates, is now set at two minutes forty-nine seconds. “Fuck--”

Grantaire is tight around his tongue, tight pressure that is nearly ready to take all of him. Enjolras eases back, with an emphasis on slow, lingering licks, and the way that Grantaire groans is the map that he reads. Enjolras lets himself listen to the rhythm of another body, lets it speak back to him; and Grantaire lets him in so far he could get lost here, doing this, stay doing nothing but this. 

“Please,” Grantaire is saying. “Should I beg, like the first time? Do you like to make people beg?”

He takes his mouth away. It's sort of wrenching to do. “Sometimes,” Enjolras admits. “That isn't necessary now. I know how badly you want me to fuck you. You can't stop moving your hips, and your shoulders keep curving up; you toss your head, and even your hair is prepared, knows how hard I'm going to pull it when I'm in you. I--”

“Now,” says Grantaire, doing all of those things at once, a full-body shudder from scalp to toe-tip. Enjolras agrees, and gets up to leave the room -- the smack to one firm asscheek isn't pronounced, though by the noise Grantaire makes you'd think he'd really gone for it -- and goes to get the lube that's stashed in the bottommost drawer in the hall bathroom. 

When he comes back, the couch is empty. Grantaire is on the floor, on the maroon carpet, on his hands and knees.

Enjolras drops behind him without hesitation, but -- “You'll hurt your knees.”

“A little rugburn's a badge of sex pride,” says Grantaire. “C'mon. You've been looking like you were going to throw me down for half the morning. Come on.”

His fingers go in so easily. He starts with two, and Grantaire's exclamation, bitten off, is a celebration of the fact. He knows just how to twist them now, knows already what Grantaire likes best; and Grantaire is so _ready_ , see how he shoves back, already, see how his spine curves, hear how sharp his gasp, what he is murmuring--

“Tell me that you want me,” Grantaire is saying. “Tell --”

Enjolras is hard to the point of pain and leaking; he uses his thumb to swipe the bead of precome over his cockhead, then follows it with enough lube, but not too much. “I want you,” says Enjolras. And maybe it's having Grantaire bent like this before him, maybe it's the nature of what they're doing, maybe it's lessons learned from Grantaire, but suddenly he can't stop talking about it:

“I wanted you when I saw the first picture of you in the green hat. I wanted you when I saw you in the restaurant. I told you how I wanted you in the bar. I've wanted you in the in-between,” he admits, and replaces his fingers, and though he wants, also, to thrust into Grantaire without restraint, it is not the day nor time for it. He moves carefully. They will feel every inch of skin on skin on skin. He does not tell Grantaire it is the first time he has ever done so. “I want you like this, with nothing between us.”

It's difficult to maintain the resolve of restraint because -- Christ, fuck, Grantaire's skin is flush all over, his body is a furnace. He's hot, he's burning up. Grantaire threatens to consume. He does. He's wet, too, slick with lube and the ministrations of tongue, and so tight on his cock as he presses inside that Enjolras is the one to cry out. He doesn't recognize his voice, doesn't realize it's his own, just keeps going. 

By the time he's finally in all the way, Grantaire's body a sheath made to fit him, they're both panting, and Grantaire's monologue consists of, “Fuck. Enjolras. Fuck. Fuck, you feel -- God, I knew, but, Jesus, God, every God in every book, ever -- yes -- just like that --” and Enjolras does, like that.

He's barely bottomed out before his grip transfers from hip to gather a fistful of Grantaire's hair. He can feel the crunch of the crushed curls against his palm, the resistance as he tugs, the way Grantaire's whole body can be made to respond to the commands of his fingers, like computers do, only with more grace. 

And then Enjolras wants to laugh, exuberant, and he wants to cry out again, but what he does is set up his body to claim Grantaire's with every stroke, and he tries to fuck him past the carpet and down through the floorboards, into the cellar, and from there the basement, where they'll hit earth, and then lava, molten. 

Enjolras opens his eyes and his mouth is open on Grantaire's neck, he is biting there. It's part of the urge to seize, and mate, and though Grantaire has yielded, Enjolras holds him for a while, testing, with his teeth. 

They are slippery with sweat but the friction on his cock as he thrusts deep is a sensation he hasn't known. It sparks electric, generated by their motion and momentum, the way Grantaire receives him so well, and drives back on him too; and the current travels from their joined selves up separate spines, and it makes Grantaire say his name, now, and for Enjolras to somehow fuck him harder. The generator is on overload; it doesn't matter, Grantaire always matches him, they're headed for a meltdown.

He lets go of Grantaire's hair, relaxes his jaw. He buries his face in Grantaire's neck, like he had the night before, falling asleep. He tells Grantaire's ear how much he wants him, coming in him. He stays like that for so long, they both do, breathing. Live-wired. Neither of them have touched Grantaire's cock, its aching curve. When Enjolras tried Grantaire batted him away, whispered, “I just want to feel you,” but now that they are shaking with Enjolras' relief, he tries again. Now Grantaire permits his hand. Enjolras recalls their shower, how he'd preferred his strokes fast and rough. He's still in Grantaire, stroking. Grantaire swings his head around, to look at him, and ply his lips.

Enjolras has to pull out eventually, giving it as much attention as his entrance. Grantaire is so terribly close; his pupils have flared black as his hair and air is being forced from his lungs when he is trying to suck it in. 

He's fighting it, though, muscles tensed against orgasm, letting Enjolras draw it from him as he would; doesn't expect, but doesn't protest, when he is turned over again, and Enjolras closes his mouth around Grantaire's cock. He doesn't have Grantaire's expertise, but he has tenacity, he is audacious; he swallows Grantaire, and Grantaire comes as soon as he moves up and back again, Grantaire bitter and sweet on his tongue. 

They break apart, nominally, with Grantaire laying across his lap; Enjolras lies back, too, and they form a loose X on the floor. 

Two minutes fifty-two seconds, a new record time for silence. Then Grantaire says, “Did you...” The question wanders off. It's nearly as long, again, before he refinds it. “Was it like that for you, too?”

 _Was it like that._ It's a statement, a sentence, a question, without sense, without specifics. Unnamed. Impossible to phrase, perhaps, even for Grantaire.

But Enjolras knows what he means. “Yes,” he says.

“Is it always?”

His hand smooths Grantaire's flank. “No.” 

“With me?”

Enjolras feels his mouth quirk. “So far.”

“Good,” says Grantaire. Enjolras can savor Grantaire's smile like he can still taste the varied flavors of Grantaire on his tastebuds. “For me, too.”

“I know,” says Enjolras, with all of Han Solo's cocky flare; perhaps more. Grantaire hits him with a cushion. Then they climb back up onto the couch, and fit together like they had before they woke up, like pieces of the same puzzle.


End file.
